These days, superhero movies dominate the multiplex, are nominated for Oscars, and bring families together. Much of the credit for this goes to Marvel, a company which has mastered the art of making both major leaguers like Captain America and talking trees like Groot into worldwide icons. Just like Marvel revitalized comic books in the 1960s with the unique combination of flawed heroes and interconnected storylines, today's Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed blockbusters forever.
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These days, superhero movies dominate the multiplex, are nominated for Oscars, and bring families together. Much of the credit for this goes to Marvel, a company which has mastered the art of making both major leaguers like Captain America and talking trees like Groot into worldwide icons. Just like Marvel revitalized comic books in the 1960s with the unique combination of flawed heroes and interconnected storylines, today's Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed blockbusters forever.
The cliffhanger is one of the most important weapons a writer can have in their arsenal. When done right, they leave the audience breathless, dying to see what happens next. Sadly, there are also many cliffhanger attempts that never get resolved, leaving fans hanging forever and never rewarding their patience and loyalty with, well, anything.
It seems like just about every new movie is looking to be turned into a franchise or a trilogy these days. While it makes sense for some movies (like superhero stories) to receive multiple sequels and be part of a shared universe, it doesn't always need to happen. (If you saw The Hangover, you get the idea. If you saw any of the sequels to The Hangover, you're jumping from your seat and shouting, "Preach!") Of course, sometimes movies just aren't commercially successful enough for a studio to greenlight a sequel, even if the sequel was going to be really awesome and even if it does leave the previous movie on a totally unacceptable cliffhanger. But people vote with their wallets, so there are plenty of studios with planned sequels that never saw the light of day. Here are some of the movies that will never see their trilogies completed, no matter how much you beg.
Hey, if you're going to get superpowers, a fancy costume, and devote your life to battling evildoers, you better have a good explanation. Origin stories are the bread and butter of superhero fables, and even when these characters get rebooted every decade, the core story tends to stay consistent. Spider-Man grabs your heart because you know what happened to his Uncle Ben. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the result of some oozy sewer contamination. Iron Man is a rich jerk who gets dumped in a cave, fights his way out, and becomes a little less of a jerk. If you're a fan, you know 'em all.
This might surprise you, but Hollywood isn't perfect. Terrible ideas can get the green light for the silliest of reasons, and promising projects can gain momentum only to fall apart, leaving disappointed fans wondering why Tinseltown would tease us so. Oftentimes, there are perfectly good reasons for the cancellation of an in-development project — the death of a lead actor, for example, or a blindingly fast exit by a director. But some exciting projects were canned for reasons that are nonsensical, bizarre, stupid, or all three.
